When you put so much effort into creating and designing a blog and filling it with content, you naturally want people to come by and see it.

The number of people that come to your blog is called traffic. The more traffic you get, the more likely you are to find loyal readers that will follow or bookmark your blog and come back to read more and leave comments.

Comments and traffic both help add to your blog's credibility as well as it's Google rank. Here are some things you can do to get the word out about your blog.

E-mail signatures

Any email account provider will allow you to adjust your settings, and one of those settings is your email signature. This is what appears automatically at the bottom of all of your emails. CEOs will often have their business information listed here: a "Sincerely, (name)" followed by his or her company name and position within the company and a website URL, telephone number and/or email address. You should be doing this too. On my Clogs and Tulips email address, my signature includes my name, the blog name, the blog motto, the blog URL, and the most recent post published to the blog. Now anyone receiving emails from you will have the chance to see your blog and click on the link.

Forums

Signatures are also available on many online forums. Anytime you leave a comment or reply to one, your blog information will be included at the bottom of your response. If the forum in question allows you a profile, make sure you link to your blog in the profile. If someone asks a question or leaves a comment in a discussion thread, you can respond with information and a link to a key post on your blog that goes into even further detail on the topic. Curious minds will click through to get that information.

Social Networks

Four Square, Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn all provide you with a personal page or profile. Link to your blog there. Tweet excellent and relevent posts from your blog. Start a Facebook fanpage for your blog. Add your RSS feed on LinkedIn. Build a community and take the time to respond to people and answer any questions, linking to an appropriate post on your blog to add to the discussion.

Social Bookmarking

Delicious, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Digg... the options are endless. Sign up for any one of these and build a following. There is great debate as to whether you should share your own work on these bookmarking sites. I bookmark mine, but intersperse them with several bookmarks from those I follow and articles I enjoy and want to share. So far, I've seen no repercussions. If you are uncomfortable with bookmarking your own material, strike a deal with a friend or social bookmarking contact and agree to bookmark each other's work. Just remember that anything you bookmark, you are recommending, so make sure it's something you really agree with and believe in.

Comment on other blogs

Find other blogs in your niche and comment, comment, comment. Those bloggers will see your comments and more than likely check out your blog to see what it's all about. If they like what they see, they may follow you or link to you, letting their readers know that you exist. Other readers will also see your comments and may be compelled to see what else you have to offer on your blog. Make sure comments are worth while and add to the discussion. Comments like "Great post! I like your blog!" will annoy more than attract potential readers.

Link to other blogs

By linking to other blogs in your niche you build credibility and show your readers that you are most interested in being informative and doing your research to create the best content you can. More than likely, the bloggers you are linking to will find out and want to return the favor.

Guest post

Guest posts and interviews on other blogs are a great way to increase traffic. Readers of the other blog will see what you can do. Make the post a good one so that any reader who comes across your post will want to read more from you. They may click through to your blog and even become a subscriber. Just as you will be sharing the post with your social network, so will the other blogger, increasing the reach of your post and bringing in more potential readers.

Invite guest posters

Having others guest post on your blog can be just as effective as guest posting on other blogs. It'll give your readers a new voice and a new angle to look forward to, and the guest poster will be sure to share the post with his or her social network. This means that more people will be privy to your blog's existance than if you were sharing it with your network alone.

I'm sure there are other ways, so now I'm opening the floor to you: What other ways do you promote your blog? Which have you found to be most useful? Which have you found to be a waste of time?

© 2010 Tiffany Jansen, writer

This post was originally published to Putting Words to Paper on December 13, 2010.

* This pist was originally published on SheWrites in August 2016.